The most popular tournaments of December

Posted Jan 10, 2019

December was the last month of the year and passed without really having a gaming boom. A large number of holidays were significantly cutting on the workweek, which resulted in overall decrease in time available for holding matches.

However, there was also a slight repeat of November situation. Just like Worlds, Riot's All-Stars held in Vegas managed to become the center of the industry for its duration. At the peak, the games were followed by more than 32 million "people." At the same time, the closest competitor lagged behind by more than 10 million.

Playoffs of King Pro League Fall Season were quite a surprise for many gamers. Event broadcasts were able to collect a little more than 20 million. For a mobile game, this result is amazing, especially knowing its popularity in the west.

Seen in the third place was another League of Legends Championship. This time it was not about show matches with fan-selected players – rather, it is a full-fledged regional championship for the Chinese scene. As expected, only Chinese players have followed such an event.

The last two lines in this ranking represented the PUBG tournaments – the first one being National Electronic Sports Tournament, and following it, WEGL Weibo Cup. In both competitions, only Chinese cyber athletes took part. And this means that the events were interesting only to fans hailing from the Middle Kingdom.

If you look at the world statistics without taking Chinese audience into consideration, then the first place in the ranking will be still claimed by All-Stars (League of Legends). American Winter Royale will get on the fourth line of the rating. At the same time, the remaining three positions will be taken by new events for the comparatively less-known mobile esports.

The second on the list will be the Arena of Valor International Championship. The World Championship for this mobile MOBA firmly stood its ground due to the huge interest shown by the Asian part of the audience, which greatly influenced the viewability of this discipline both in December and across the whole year.

The third place will be again taken by a mobile giant, this time personified by Clash Royale. The main competition of the year of the game is only a few thousand spectators ahead of its rival, which took 4th place. At the same time, a similar result makes one wonder about the amount of interest gamers have to the games of similar type.

Adding fuel to the fire, the fifth line of our statistics shows the tournament on the mobile version of PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds. PUBG Mobile Star Challenge's peak views reached 278 thousand spectators. For this game, such a figure is a great success, especially considering that this is a standalone tournament from the shooter's developers.

English broadcasts on Twitch continue to maintain the trends introduced during the recent months. The most popular tournament of the month was the Fortnite event. The North American part of the Winter Royale has produced a huge number of spectators. At its peak, this competition managed to hold interest of almost 320 thousand players. In general, such a result would be expected for Epic Games, especially with a small number of rivals.

MOBA from Riot Games also didn't miss its chance to shine. 2018's star games gathered their “cream of the crop” and demonstrated the interest English-speaking community held in a show tournament, one that had little to do with esports. However, we believe that the event could show better results, had it a more enjoyable schedule for the European audience.

The Call of Duty World Championship, held in Vegas, suddenly rushed to the top of the ranking. Despite the small amount of viewer interest to the usual Black Ops 4 broadcasts, the esports aspect of the shooter still had its fandom, one known to retain its loyalty for years.

The last two spots went to another Fortnite championship, this time from World Showdown of Esports, and FUT Champions. The latter is a monthly competition from the FIFA developer, broadcasted on the official channel of the discipline.

The Russian-speaking audience also did not change own habits. The whole ranking was occupied by Dota 2 and CS:GO. MegaFon Winter Clash too the first place. The peak of the broadcast came during the match between the CIS team (represented by Natus Vincere) and the Europeans from Liquid.

The final of the eighth season of the ESL Pro League came second. The largest public was gathered, as many already expected, by the match with “yellow-blacks”, albeit in a different discipline. What can we say, the Ukrainian team has already got used to focusing almost all the attention of the Russian-speaking audience on itself.

The event in Lisbon is located on the third place. Blast Pro Series repeated the finals of few of its previous championships, namely by having the first and second world's best teams meet in the final match. It became the most popular match of the whole tournament for the CIS gamers.

The last two spots again went to Dota 2 events. The first one being the Ukrainian WESG final with a peak between the two Team Ukraine teams. Next to it, and concluding the top five, was the second season of the MegaFon Champions League with the best match being the one between Alliance and Team Spirit.

Despite the huge interest of players in the League of Legends, the Riot Games channel in December came only second – whereas the one ranked gold in this case was the official page of Call of Duty. Following these two was the place taken by RuHub, on which MegaFon Winter Clash was broadcasted. The fourth position was taken by FIFA esports channel.

The most amazing part of the ranking was loltyler1. The very own page of Tyler "Tyler1" Steinkamp broadcasted not only the gamer content, but also his Tyler1 Championship Series. Due to this, in December, the channel became the fifth most popular in the esports industry.

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